


A Safe Place in the Dark

by Taste_is_Sweet



Series: Dread and Darling Boys [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Fights, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:12:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/pseuds/Taste_is_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ward knows that if he doesn't kill Rogers today, the punishment's going to be hell. He doesn't want to be strapped down on the restraint table again, or forced to go weeks without food or sleep. He doesn't want Agent Taylor to look at him with disappointment in her eyes. He wants her to tell him he's good and she's proud and that she won't have to hurt him.</i> </p><p>
  <i>He remembers what she told him: about how important it is for Rogers to die, and how brave Ward is to do it, and how she's certain he won't fail.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>But Rogers is still alive.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Safe Place in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_laverty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_laverty/gifts).



> I really have to thank [Brumeier](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier) and [WrathChilde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WrathChilde/pseuds/WrathChilde), for going far above and beyond (and way late at night) to help me work out exactly how badly to hurt everyone in this thing. You guys were fantastic.
> 
> I also need to thank [Squeaky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Squeaky/pseuds/Squeaky) for being her usual awesome self and helping with logistics via very long phone conversations.
> 
> This story fills the **Electrocution** square of my [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) [card](http://taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com/85941.html).

Hydra's monsters are doing an excellent job of distracting the Avengers.

They're human—mostly human—so they're only monsters in the way that Ward is a monster. But unlike him they have things that look like metal insects with liquid inside them running along their arms. He knows that the insects are injectors and their multitude of legs are syringes. He knows that the monster-soldiers have longer centipede devices crossing their backs from shoulder to shoulder, hidden under their jackets. And the liquid inside them used to be orange. Now it's green.

He doesn't know where this knowledge comes from. Agent Taylor definitely didn't tell him. All he needs to know is already in his head, has been for weeks: at least twenty simultaneous attacks would hit New York today, in areas around the city specially chosen to appear random. The Avengers would be forced to separate to deal with all of them at once. His job would be to track Steve Rogers and kill him at the earliest opportunity.

It's late evening, and he's had three opportunities so far. He hasn't taken any of them.

Ward knows that if he doesn't kill Rogers today, the punishment's going to be hell. He doesn't want to be strapped down on the restraint table again, or forced to go weeks without food or sleep. He doesn't want Agent Taylor to look at him with disappointment in her eyes. He wants her to tell him he's good and she's proud and that she won't have to hurt him.

He remembers what she told him: about how important it is for Rogers to die, and how brave Ward is to do it, and how she's certain he won't fail.

But Rogers is still alive.

And now Ward's lying prone on the flat concrete roof of a low apartment building nearby, watching as Rogers takes on three of the centipede monsters at once. Ward is close enough to see the way the green liquid swirls in the injector as the first one goes for a brutal punch that Rogers deflects off his shield. Ward is close enough to hear each heavy breath and grunt of effort, and Rogers' strained voice on the radio as he updates his team on his position. Ward's more than close enough to shoot Rogers in the side of his head, right through his exposed ear.

He's still watching. He hasn't pulled the trigger because his hands are shaking. His whole body's shivering like he's freezing, like he's just been pulled out of the cylinder. His breath is roaring against his facemask and it doesn't feel like there's enough air coming through the holes to let him breathe.

Weakness is unacceptable. Failure means punishment and pain. And sometimes good, honorable people have to die. But he can't shoot the gun. 

Below him, the first monster-soldier goes down from Rogers' shield scything him in the throat. The other two are less suicidal than that, but they're still overly confident and aggressive and stupid. It's clear that Rogers is going to win.

Ward has to do it now. He doesn't know how many more chances he'll get, and in minutes it'll be dark and the other Avengers will be here. And he can hear his handlers on the radio in his ear, asking why he hasn't completed his mission. Soon he'll have to actually answer them, and he won't be able to lie.

So he adjusts his grip to perfectly line up the gun sights, aiming for the center of Rogers' right ear. It takes all his concentration to keep his hands steady, to make sure the gun doesn't waver. He breathes in, then exhales and pulls the trigger.

The blast of the gun firing sounds like the end of the world.

Ward shoots the two centipede soldiers before they can do more than blink at the sudden loss of their opponent. There can never be witnesses, and if they're dead they can't do anything to the corpse. Ward doesn't want Rogers' teammates to find him torn apart or with his shield stolen.

The sudden silence in the alley sounds more oppressive than the gunshot. Rogers fell on his side, but rolled onto his back. His shield is lying partway over his chest, his other arm at his side like he was placed that way for his funeral. His blue eyes are still open, as empty now as the sky.

Ward jerks back from the edge. He's breathing too fast like he's terrified, even though his mission's accomplished and there's nothing here that can hurt him. He lurches to his feet then sways, suddenly so dizzy he almost topples right off the building. He manages to turn away from the edge before he drops back to his knees, then wrenches his facemask off and pukes onto the concrete. He gulps air until his heart isn't galloping and the dizziness mostly goes away, then he wipes his mouth on his shoulder. He wants to leave the mask, but slides it back on. He knows if he loses it he'll be punished for it. No one can see his face.

He doesn't want to see the corpse again, but he needs to verify that the target is dead before he reports to his handlers. He stands at the edge of the roof, forces himself to look down.

He thinks maybe the right hand twitches.

Ward stops breathing. He yanks off his goggles, looks again.

Roger's fingers close in a fist, like he's gathering back his life. His head lolls to the side and his eyes finally shut. And now Ward can see the smear of red where he took off the very top of Rogers' ear. But he's alive. Rogers is breathing and waking up and he's alive.

He's alive, but that doesn't make any sense. Ward didn't miss the shot. He _knows_ he didn't miss. Did Rogers hear him at the last second? Did he duck? Did one of the monster-soldiers accidentally push him out of the way?

It doesn't matter. All that matters is that Rogers is getting up, and Ward needs to lift his gun and aim and shoot him again and why isn't he shooting him?

And then Rogers is on his knees and then unsteadily on his feet and he sees that the other two centipede soldiers are dead. And then he immediately looks up to where Ward is standing on the edge of the roof and he sees him.

Rogers sees him and his dazed eyes go wide like he _recognizes_ him, and then Ward is throwing himself into a back handspring so Rogers' shield doesn't take off his head. Ward flips back to his feet as the shield caroms off the stairwell cupola behind him.

He was _seen_ , and there can never be witnesses, and he was made for this—literally; reborn in metal and blood and pain—and his breath comes steady and even as the shield careens off the fire escape of the taller building next to his at the same time as he aims his handgun. And Rogers catches his shield in time to deflect the bullets that would've otherwise perforated his chest.

Ward drops the gun and unsheathes his combat knife. He steps off the edge of the roof.

He drops straight down to the pavement, landing with his knees bent to take the impact. He can feel it reverberate up his spine but his legs aren't damaged and anything else will heal. Rogers is still dazed, it's clear in the way his eyes don't quite focus. But he comes at Ward immediately, tries to hit him in the face with his shield. Ward dodges, grips the edge with his right hand and yanks it away, stabbing at Rogers' face at the same time. Rogers jerks his head to the side, so that the knife only slices a groove along his cheek.

He punches Ward in the chest, and Ward feels something crack, ignores it. He tries to wrench the shield out of Rogers' grip, but even though he's as strong as Rogers now, with his metal arms and legs and what Hydra's done to him, he can't make Rogers let go.

Instead he whirls so that he's inside the reach of the shield, his back to Rogers, and elbows him in the face. He hears the snap of a bone and he twists to get out of the way, but Rogers is faster and slams him in the back with his shield.

That drives the air out of his lungs. Ward goes with the impact, ducking into a flip and launching himself back to his feet. He spins, throwing the knife at Rogers' throat. As soon as the knife leaves his hand he somersaults, pulling his second knife, and plunges it into Rogers' thigh.

Rogers cries out in pain. Ward feels the knife blade punch into the bone. He rockets up to his feet, dragging the knife so the stab turns into a long trench in the muscle. Rogers screams, shoves Ward away with his shield, but then falls as his leg gives out.

Ward keeps the knife as he falls back; a brilliant gout of red follows it. He somersaults to his feet. Rogers is on the ground, clutching at his leg. Incapacitated. 

But 'incapacitated' isn't good enough. Rogers has to be dead. Anything less is failure. Weakness. Unacceptable. Except--

Except--

Steve Rogers is clutching at his leg, red soaking into the blue uniform, grimacing in pain as Ward advances. His eyes are huge, blood seeping down his face from his cheek and his nose, staining his teeth and his chin. He pushes himself further away with his good leg and one free arm. It's not very far. He throws his shield. Ward slaps it out of the air.

Kill him, Ward thinks. Kill him. If you don't she'll hurt you. He changes his grip on the knife. He only has to take two more steps, kneel next to him. It'll be over in a second. Rogers is in a lot of pain. Ward can kill him quickly. Painlessly. Clean.

He never wanted to hurt him.

Ward swallows, blinks the wet blur away from his vision. "I'm sorry," he says.

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye in time to thrust up his left arm to repel the bullets coming at his head. He doesn't see the arrow that buries itself in the side of his chest.

He staggers, grunts in pain as the air punches out of him. He yanks out the arrow as he lurches into a run, heading down the nearest intersecting alley. He's had hours to plan this escape route and he's already hauling himself up the fire escape before he hears the heavy thud of the two men coming after him.

His side is burning, burning, burning and he failed and he's moving too slow. Down below him he hears one of the men swearing and the other shout, " _STEVE!_ " in a voice full of horror and fear, and then Rogers saying, "I'm all right! Go! Go!" And Ward flings himself the rest of the way onto the roof and runs for his life.

He leaps across the open air to the next building, and the next, racing the encroaching night's darkness and the man he can still hear behind him. All he has to do is keep going for a few more blocks and his handlers will be waiting to take him back to Agent Taylor and her punishment. He's not sure if he'll make it.

His legs and arms are pumping like the machines they are, but he has cracked ribs and a hole in his lung and his heart is laboring-- _bangbangbangbang_ \--on too little air. He's coughing, tastes blood, rips off his mask and lets it drop so he can breathe. It's better, but not enough.

He keeps going. Ward launches himself to another rooftop and his chest hurts but that's good. That way he can concentrate on nothing but movement and escape routes and the pain. It means he's not thinking about what Agent Taylor will do to him; he doesn't have to remember the way Rogers' eyes looked after Ward stabbed him: wide and bright blue and clouding with shock and pain.

He jumps to the next roof but not quite far enough. He just catches the edge with one foot, throws himself forward into a shoulder roll so he won't fall. As he staggers to his feet he hears the _bang!_ and scrape as his pursuer lands and skids a little on the gravel one roof behind him.

Ward runs to the center of the roof he's on to put more distance between them. He swings around, his second, unused handgun up and firing as the other man leaps the final gap between them. He gets off four shots, any of which would kill, except the other man lifts his metal left arm and deflects them all. Just like Ward did.

Just like him.

He read everything Agent Laboume gave him about the Avengers. He knows all their names, their strengths and weaknesses. They'd figured out together where, given their abilities, Rogers would most likely send each of them. He knows Clint Barton (Hawkeye) shot him with the arrow. He thought it was Sam Wilson (Falcon) who had shot at him with the gun.

But he doesn't know who this is.

He doesn't know him, but Ward recognizes that black body armor, and the metal left arm. It's not exactly the same as either of his, but it's close enough.

Ward has a second, less, to shoot the man again, to prepare to defend himself, to whirl and run. But he doesn't move. He feels like he's on the restraint table, every muscle spasming as the electricity rips through his arms and down his spine. He feels like he's in the chair, screaming around the rubber guard in his mouth as his mind tears apart. 

The chair accidentally stopped his heart once, when Doctor Meier set the current too high. But he feels that way now: the same bright agony with his heart dead in his chest and the air like stones in his lungs. And he can't move. He can't move.

"What are you?" he gasps. " _What are you?_ "

There's no answer.

They hit like the blast of an explosion. The other Asset (who can't be, who shouldn't be) tackles him, left arm across his throat. Ward lands hard on his back, choking with his mouth full of blood. The gun flies, bounces off the side of the building. But he has two metal arms and he's stronger, and he grabs the other Asset's one vulnerable flesh-and-bone arm and uses it to throw him across the roof. The Asset lands hard on his side and nearly skids off the edge. But he digs into the tar with his left hand and he's fast and back on his feet with a knife in his hand before Ward can do more than stand up and hold the hole in his side and try to breathe. 

The Asset uses his left shoulder to drive Ward into the cupola for the roof access stairs. The back of Ward's head smacks the concrete and for a second the world is gone, black like the night, but he snaps awake in time to stop the knife point before it goes through his eye. He closes his fist around the blade and shoves the Asset's arm back hard enough that he growls in pain.

The Asset drops the knife and kicks him in the knee. It doesn't hurt but it knocks Ward off-balance. Before he can get it back the Asset grabs him around the throat with his left hand and slams him onto the roof.

Ward loses the world again and when he comes to his head hurts and everything is still narrow and grey and red. The Asset is holding him down by kneeling with one leg trapping Ward's arm and the other one crushing his chest. Ward punches him but it's clumsy and weak and the other Asset only has to twist his head to the side to avoid it. It's impossible to see the man's eyes behind his goggles, but his teeth are bared like an angry dog.

"I'm the Winter Soldier," he says. "And I'm the one who's going to kill you."

The name means nothing.

Ward tries to buck him off, to kick, but his chest is on fire and he can't breathe and his body won't work anymore. He left his knives with Rogers and his guns are gone, but Agent Laboume gave him a weapon to use in case he had to fight Iron Man.

He hadn't planned to use it; doesn't even want to touch the thing, because it works like the restraint table and the magnetic bugs the agents used to kill his arms and legs. But the Winter Soldier has a mechanical arm too.

Ward fumbles the bug out of his belt pouch, then smacks it onto the Winter Soldier's left arm. Agent Laboume said it functioned on contact.

It does. The Winter soldier scrabbles for it, but even as he gets his hand on the bug Ward can hear the tiny, cheerful _beep_ and it glows red. And then the Winter Soldier's metal hand jerks open as it stops working, and then he arches and starts to scream.

Ward shoves him away and rolls on his side, coughing and trying to breathe. He feels like he's drowning, all he can taste and smell is copper and salt. He stabs the fingers of one hand into the cracked concrete wall of the cupola, then pulls himself up so he's sitting with his back against it. The entire city starts a slow spin around him, but now he can drag some air into his lungs. His left side is soaking with blood.

He uses the wall to get to his feet and stay balanced when the blackness threatens again.

The Winter Soldier is still screaming. He's writhing in agony, his body going through the same spasms Ward remembers from the restraint table. The Winter Soldier can't coordinate his muscles enough to even get at his left arm, let alone yank the bug off it. His goggles have come off and his eyes are wide open and bright blue and wild with pain.

They look like Rogers'.

Ward knows exactly how much pain he's in. The bug will keep up this slow electrocution until it runs out of power. The Winter Soldier will stop being able to breathe long before that happens. 

Ward can't leave him like this. There can never be witnesses, but he's already failed his mission. One more failure won't make any difference. He's sure he'll be put on the restraint table again, but he's so tired and in so much pain he doesn't even care anymore. He just wants to get to his handlers and the facility and the table and get it over with. If he's lucky they'll use the chair on him afterwards, instead of before. It doesn't matter why the Winter Soldier looks like him, or why Agent Laboume never listed him with the other Avengers. Eventually that'll be torn out of Ward's mind too.

He takes a step closer to the Winter Soldier, and then he hears a rush of air and looks up in time to see Iron Man racing through the air towards him. The Falcon is right behind.

Ward turns around and staggers into a run, hoping the two men will ignore him to help their teammate; hoping he'll be able to make the jump to the next roof.

He almost does. He kicks off all right, but instead of making it all the way across he ends up slapping the gutter with his palms. He digs in his fingers, but it pulls on the wound in his side and he can't hold on with that hand. And then the metal crumples and tears and he's falling.

He's only one story above the ground when he manages to catch the fire escape with his good hand. The reverberating clang alerts the family inside and makes his teeth rattle, but he drops to the pavement before anyone can rush to the window and see. He lands feet first, but collapses to his knees when his legs give out. He spits blood, grits his teeth and shoves himself to his feet again. He's so dizzy he can barely see, but he runs anyway because he has no choice.

His handlers are waiting, and he knows the Avengers will come looking for him.

He wonders if his handlers will try to find him. He lost his radio somewhere, but he probably has some kind of tracker. Maybe he was micro-chipped like a dog. Agent Taylor never told him.

Maybe they'll just leave him. Garrett would.

Garrett?

Ward stops, shakes his head sharply. The dizziness flares but when it settles the name Garrett is just that, a name. It means nothing.

He's tired, and he's injured and he needs to get away from this part of the city. He has to keep moving, find his handlers, go home--

_Home is a farmhouse near a field and a well where a boy is drowning (it burned). Home is a bus that can fly (they were begging him when they fell). Home is a shelter and a dog (and no one is going to come for him). Home is a pretty woman with sad, dark eyes (she knows he's a monster). Home is a prison and he doesn't need/have/wait for anyone (there is no-one). Home is a school where he learns how to kill (he knows how to kill). Home is a facility with a room and a chair and a cylinder and two tables and hunger and fear and pain (and pain, and pain)._

\--Ward leans against the wall of a building, gripping the brick so hard that it powders under his fingers. His eyes are shut tight but he can't stop _seeing_ and there's so much and he can almost grasp it, almost remember…

He doesn't want to remember. It hurts. It hurts even more than his injuries, and he doesn't understand. Pain is physical. This is…like what makes him shake, sometimes. This is like fear. He knows fear. But it's not. It's different, and worse, and it hurts and he just wants it to stop...

Keep moving. He has to keep moving and get to the rendezvous. Once he's back at the facility everything will make sense again. He just needs to get there.

He pushes away from the wall and limps further down the alley, looking for a safe place in the dark.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> The next story will deal with the _Avengers_ ' side of the aftermath. I promise I'm not going leave anyone grievously injured or screaming on a roof.


End file.
